What Lies Hidden in Your Closet: Part Two

     CREAK!!

      Kalina nearly jumped a mile into the air, but she quickly realized that the source of the noise was simply her owner, who had stepped on a loose board in the hallway. She breathed a loud sigh of relief but quickly stopped herself. She didn't want whoever--or whatever that was behind the door to know she was there. After taking another deep but quiet breath, she reached up for the doorknob a second time. As slowly as she could, she tried to turn the cold metal knob with her paw. Strangely enough, the knob seemed to be stuck. It wouldn't move at all! Kalina knew for a fact that she hadn't locked the door earlier in the day, because she hadn't even seen a lock on the door.

      As she stared in confusion, more noises came from behind the door. To prevent the creator of the noises from escaping from the closet, she decided that she'd sit in front of the door for the rest of the night. Looking over her shoulder briefly, she darted for the bed and grabbed a pillow and blanket. Once back in front of the door, she fell asleep quickly.

     ***

      Kalina cracked a big yawn as she sleepily rolled over and opened her eyes. Not only did the bright sun shining through the window tell her that it was later than she had intended to sleep, but she quickly noticed something else. Her closet door was open a crack. Curious, she crawled inside and turned on the light. Everything appeared to be as she had left it the day before, with the exception of the dolls in her dollhouse. They were out of their box and had been scattered across the floor. Most of them, she noticed, were wearing different outfits than they had the day before. What was going on?

      Just as she reached to pick up the dolls from the floor and place them back in the box, Kalina's owner called her to help unpack boxes. Groaning, Kalina walked out of the closet. Oh well, she thought. It couldn't take too long to unpack a few boxes, could it?

      As it turned out, she had to eat her words. After rounding the corner from the hallway into the living room, Kalina stopped in shock. Her living room had nearly twice as many boxes in it than she had remembered seeing! "Where did all these come from?!" she squeaked.

      "Well, half of them were dropped here, but most of them were shoved in various other rooms yesterday. I figured it would be easier if all of the boxes were all together." Simultaneously, Kalina and her owner sighed, but they both got to work.

      Finally, the seemingly endless mountains of boxes were unpacked, so Kalina was free to wander off and do whatever she pleased. "Who woulda thought?" she said, her words without an intended target. She walked into her room and plucked her Green Uni Plushie off the bed. "Who woulda thought," she repeated, this time talking to the toy, "that those boxes could take all day to unpack?" She sighed and replaced the plushie back into its former position to the right of her pillow. The day, in truth, had flown by, and as Kalina started tranquilly out her bedroom window at the sun. She noticed that the sun appeared to be sinking into the ocean and was casting long rays of light across the surface of the water. For the first time since she had moved, she took a moment to appreciated the beauty of the place where she now lived. The moment was short-lived, however, and her thoughts soon wandered back to the closet. For some reason, Kalina had developed a certain fixation with her new closet, and it wasn't just because of the dollhouse. There seemed to be something else about it. It seemed... mysterious. Something about the closet was strange, and that had been proved very well by all of the noises last night. As Kalina walked back into the closet, she flicked on the light and saw that she was about to get another taste of its strangeness. Again, as before, all of her dolls were in different outfits and in different spots than they had been when she had seen them last, earlier in the day. This time, her Prom Date Usuki was standing on the edge of the dollhouse's living room, and he was dressed in his original outfit, complete with a tiny bouquet of flowers which he clasped in his tiny hand. "What on Neop--" Kalina started, walking over to the miniature house. She reached down to pick him up. He, like the closet's doorknob the previous night, was stuck and would not budge. Confused and convinced that it was just her imagination, she tugged harder... and harder... and harder, until, finally, she was straining all of her muscles so much that she finally lost grip on the doll and went flying backwards.

      The force caused Kalina to fly back and smack the back of her paw on the shelf, then to slide down the wall. Now sitting on the floor, a small book fell from the shelf and landed in her lap. The book appeared to be quite old, and the letters inscribed on its cracked leather cover spelled out the word "diary." With interest Kalina turned her attention to its contents, but something else quickly caught her eye. The doll.

      Before, he had been standing towards the inside walls of the dollhouse, staring straight forward, but he had definitely changed position. Now he was turned toward her, and his head was tilted upwards to stare her in the eye. The diary was put aside so Kalina could crawl to him. She lowered herself down to the doll's level and stared him in the eye. How had he moved? She hadn't touched him, and no one else was in the room. Kalina could swear that the doll blinked, right in front of her eyes. Quickly, she sat up, startled, and she prepared to run out of the room and tell her owner what she had seen. As she stood up, however, she noticed something else quite interesting that stopped her dead in her tracks.

      When Kalina had flown back from the dollhouse after her attempt to pick up the Usuki doll, she had managed to move the dollhouse away from the wall a few inches. Now that it wasn't up against the wall anymore, she could see a clear line in the wall that made it look like there was a... door. Before, the house had covered the wall and hidden it. Shoving the dollhouse out of the way the best she could, she confirmed her finding, although she found something strange about the door. While the outlined rectangle in the wall and the hinges made it very clear that she had found a door, it had no doorknob. There wasn't even a hole in the wall where a doorknob would go. Digging her nails between the door and the wall, Kalina tried to open it, but this produced no results. She futilely tried a few more times, but this clearly was not going to work. She'd need something stronger than her nails... Do we have a crowbar somewhere? Kalina briefly wondered, wandering back into her room in search of objects that she could use. She didn't find anything else that managed to open the door, and she didn't feel like digging around in yet-to-be unpacked boxes that currently resided in the shed, so she picked up the diary and carried it back into her bedroom to read.

      The early entries were characteristic of those written by young Neopets when they receive their first diary, and they didn't contain much more than, "This is my diary! My name is blah, blah, blah, and my birthday is..." Most of these early entries were extremely boring to Kalina, although she did learn a lot about the diary's author as she skimmed through them. The author of the diary was a blue Aisha by the name of Surin--Sury for short, according to the diary--and it was obvious to Kalina by the appearance of the book that she had lived quite a long time ago. It also became apparent that Sury's owner was the one who had designed this house, and Sury was the spoiled pet who had owned all the toys in the closet.

To be continued...